Chapter 13
13
Ivy
December 22
Kauai, Hawaii
At Nā Pali, time passes quickly as Ivy sits on a rock at the lookout point she found and draws the view, one she is sure she will never tire of. The jagged surfaces of the mountains and cliffs are even more exquisite in person than they were in the photos she saw on Larry’s phone, and the colors present a unique challenge in every case. When Ivy does her pastel work, she often makes her colors extremely vivid, far surpassing what a vista might actually look like. But here, her task is to get the colors vivid enough to do the scenery justice.
Her fingers are cramping and her back is sore when her satellite communicator goes off.
“You all good, Jovie 92?”
“Yes! Great! You?” She stops herself. “Sorry. What I meant was, ‘Roger that, Buddy 90, this is Jovie 92, all good. Season’s greetings. Over and out.’?”
A staticky pause, and then Oliver’s voice is back. “Ivy? Stay where you are, and I’ll be there in a few minutes to get you. You need to see the waterfall. I’m sorry I said no earlier.” A pause. “Buddy 90 out.”
A few minutes later, Oliver arrives in the clearing. He runs his hand through his hair, making it stick up wildly, and sighs a long sigh she can hear even from several feet away.
“I couldn’t concentrate,” he says. “I felt so bad, telling you that you couldn’t come see the waterfall. All I could think the entire time was I wish Ivy were here to see this . So, I came back to get you.”
“It was fine, really, Oliver.” But she’s touched by the fact he came back for her, and finds her heart feels suddenly light, when without him around before, it felt a little heavy, even as she enjoyed her work.
“I promise, I won’t be a distraction. You can still get your shot,” she says as they walk.
He slows and gives her a long look, his expression more serious than she’s ever seen it. The dimple is nowhere to be found. “I’m not so sure about that, Ivy,” he says. Then he speeds up again before she can question why he said that. “Do you have a swimsuit on under your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. It’s a bit of a hot hike, and the pool below the falls is great for a refreshing swim. It’s where I’ve been standing for the past few hours, pruning up my toes and fingers, but not getting anywhere. I need a break.”
He’s right—she’s sweaty and tired by the time they reach the waterfall. But she forgets all about her physical state when she sees it. “ Oliver. ”
For the first time since he came back to get her, he smiles and looks relaxed again. “I know. It’s perfect. Come on.”
He peels off his shirt, and she looks away from his smooth, tanned skin and the trail of golden hair beginning just above the waistband of his board shorts. She lifts her own T-shirt over her head, discards her faded jean shorts on the rocks, then chases him as he runs lightly down the dirt path toward the water and does a cannonball into the pool below the falls. She does a slightly demurer scissor jump. The water is cool and refreshing around her.
“Ahhh, this is heaven,” she says. She swims alongside him, then treads water and stares at the falls. “I want to draw this. So badly.”
“Absolutely,” Oliver says. “Let’s dry off.”
They swim back to the edge and climb out. Ivy dries herself with her T-shirt before putting it back on. She gets out art supplies while Oliver pulls his waterproof SLR from his bag and slips back into the water. She watches for a moment as he swims over to the opposite edge of the waterfall pool, where there’s a shallower place for him to stand, just beneath the feathery wisps of water.
“I hope I’m not in your way?” he calls out.
“No, you’re good!”
For the next while, she keeps her head bent over the page in front of her, looking up only to examine the falls again, or search for a better, creamier shade of white to get the wispy strands of water against the pewter gray of the rocks just right. She’s trying hard not to focus on Oliver, not to look at him at all, but she finds that the proximity to him has made her entire body feel like it’s buzzing, more alive than usual. Eventually, he steps out from beneath the falls and swims back toward her. He’s got that serious look on his face again.
“How’d you do?” she asks.
“Not great,” he says as he climbs out of the pool and comes to sit cross-legged beside her.
“No?”
“I still don’t feel like I have it. I might have to settle for one of the shots I already have, and I’m sure once I decide on one, I’ll let this go. But for now, I have this image in my mind of the shot I want to get, and it keeps eluding me and that’s”—he rubs his damp hair—“frustrating.”
“I think I understand,” she says. “There are times I want to draw something and the light isn’t right, or I can’t seem to get the right angle, and I can waste entire days on that. But I have a lot more control over my medium than you do. I can just draw something the way I want it to look, or mix a color myself from my imagination. You’re at the mercy of nature.”
“Exactly. And don’t get me wrong, I love it—the challenge of it, because that moment when you get it, there’s nothing like it. But it’s also the bane of my existence. Anyway.” He turns away from the waterfall and looks at her. “I’m glad you got to see it.”
Ivy scoots forward to hang her legs over the side of the rocks and dips her feet into the cool water. “I love this place,” she sighs.
He smiles. “Yeah. Me, too. Not how you usually spend the holidays, huh?”
“Actually, I normally spend them alone.” She explains more about her yearly art retreats, which happen while her parents travel—as well as her parents’ hatred of corporate greed, which they associate with the commercialism of Christmas.
“Really, your parents don’t use actual money?”
“For almost everything, they barter. Dad hasn’t figured out a way to barter for flights yet, and he and my mom do like to travel. But truly—almost literally everything.”
“What’s the craziest thing he’s ever traded?”
Ivy thinks for a moment.
“Two of our prize pigs for a pickup truck. He had tears in his eyes—he loved those pigs. Hmm, what else. He dragged me to a Comic-Con convention when I decided I didn’t like comic books anymore—I went through a Catwoman phase—and we traded a box of old comic books for my Halloween costume that year.”
“And your Halloween costume was?”
“I wish I had been more original, but I was the Pink Power Ranger.”
“That’s adorable.”
“Stop it, I wanted to be taken very seriously as a preteen.”
“Oh, I take you very seriously, Ivy.” Suddenly, he’s not smiling anymore. Their eyes lock, and Ivy finds herself leaning toward him. She decides to slide back into the water, hoping the cool of it will help clear her head. He follows and they swim alongside each other.
“So, how about you?” she asks him.
“How about me, what?”
“Your family? Your embarrassing childhood stories.” They’re facing each other now, treading water. “I’m sure you must have some.”
“I didn’t exactly have an idyllic upbringing.”
“Sorry, right, you mentioned that…”
“Yeah, my parents split up when I was pretty young, and I kinda helped raise my little sister a bit—then took off as soon as she was safely in college.” They’ve reached the other side of the pool, and there’s a rock ledge to stand on. He stays in the water but leans against the rocks, and she does the same. “Now she’s just as much of a wanderer as I am, so I honestly can’t remember when the last time we spent Christmas together was, although we do try to link up at least a few times a year.”
“And your mom?”
“Gone.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head. “Yeah. She was a single mother, and she worked hard. And then she got sick. Ischemia, stress-related.” He sighs. “I always wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t had to work that hard, you know?”
“Oh, Oliver.” His sea green eyes contain a pain she suddenly wishes she could take away.
“It was tough. But I’m okay. I guess after that, and after getting Cecelia off to college, I just didn’t want to be tied to any one place anymore. And maybe I was trying to outrun my grief.”
“Did it work?”
He laughs, but it’s still a sad laugh. “Not really. Sort of? I think it was probably better than the alternative, which was rot in Indianapolis working at some dive bar for the rest of my life, possibly turning into the father I never knew. I don’t know for sure—but what I do know is I’ve done what I felt I had to do with my life. Sometimes, though…” He trails off. He doesn’t say anything more, and she feels waves of emotion as she processes all he has just told her. She had assumed, when she first met him, that he was a roving photographer and bartender because he refused to grow up, that he was irresponsible, hell-bent on having fun to the exclusion of all else. But it turns out he just grew up way too fast, and the life choices he made had nothing to do with irresponsibility at all.
“I really admire you,” she says. “I think I made some assumptions when we first met and they didn’t turn out to be true.”
He turns toward her. “Oh, yeah? What sort of assumptions did you make?”
“I guess I just thought…this sounds shitty, but that you weren’t a serious person. I’m sorry.”
She pushes herself off the rocks, floats on her back, and looks up at the sky. He joins her in the water, and she can feel his presence, floating nearby.
“And now?” he says, his voice muffled by the water in her ears. “Do you think I’m a serious person?”
She keeps floating, keeps looking at the sky. Ivy has made it a practice to be an honest person for so long that what she’s really feeling and thinking has crowded into her mind and can’t be ignored.
“Yes” is all she says.
She decides to let the water decide what’s going to happen next. A soft push and she’s by his side. One more, and their hands are touching. They float there in silence, then both turn over at the same time so they’re facing each other in the water.
“You’re a real distraction, Ivy,” he says, his voice low.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy says. “I know how much you want to get that photo.”
His gaze is intense, and she wants to get closer to him, wants their bodies to be touching again. Maybe just one kiss , she tells herself. Maybe that would be enough to get him out of my system.
The water has brought them together again. Their faces are just inches away.
“Ivy…”
“Oliver…”
“I want to kiss you,” she says, her tone frank. “I think we should. Get it out of our systems.” Her voice is a whisper, and his laughter in response is low and sexy.
“Okay, let’s try that.”
Ivy has had good kisses before. She’s had great kisses. Lots of them. But she has never in her life had a kiss like this. The water between them is a soft embrace, as are his arms, reaching for her under the water. His lips against hers are strong and searching; his tongue tastes like salt water. The kiss leaves her panting and filled with a want that veers toward need. Almost blindly, they swim together to the side of the pool, where they can rest their feet on the rocks and give themselves to exploring each other without having to worry about sinking. Clearly, this was not going to be just one kiss. Her willpower, the shred of it that was left, disintegrates like a puddle of water in the hot sun. Poof. Gone. She feels like she’s been dying of thirst for days, and is finally getting the water she needs. At some point during the kissing, they slide down into the pool together again, their legs entangling under the water as they float.
“Okay, we should stop,” Ivy eventually says, placing her hand on his chest, gasping for breath, treading water again.
“Right,” he says. “We were just getting that out of our systems. And we did. We’re good now. Right?”
“Right?”
He swims away, pulls himself out of the water, and shakes the water out from his hair. “Out of our systems,” he repeats. “Now, let’s head back to camp before it gets dark.”